 So, I'd now like to call the April 17, 2024 Long-On Stability Advisory Board meeting to order. We do a roll call. Yes, Michelle Roth. Present. Jim Metcalf. Present. Mary Lynn. Present. Charles Pussgrave is not able to join us. Robert Davidson is not able to join us. And Ralph Grosswald are also not able to join us. And Kate is going to be joining us late around five o'clock. So, we don't currently have a quorum, but we can move the informational items ahead in the agenda. Until we develop. Yeah. Lisa Knoblock. Here. Becky Doyle. Here. Nancy Jaffee. Here. Susan Bartlett. Here. Heather McIntyre is here. And Council Member Bartlett is not here. They're all part of this, I think, of the trial. He's at a meeting which I don't remember. Okay. All right. I have the land acknowledgement statement. We acknowledge that Longmont sits on the traditional territory of the Cheyenne, Arafatou and other indigenous peoples. We honor the history and the living and spiritual connection that the first peoples have with this land. It was our commitment to face the injustices that happened when the land was taken and to educate our communities, ourselves and our children to ensure that these injustices do not happen again. And our inclusion statement. The Sustainability Advisory Board embraces diverse perspectives from its members and the public to create inclusive space where everyone feels welcome to share their opinions. The Board asks that all attendees listen and speak with respect as what attacks on individuals or specific group identities. So we have... Without a quorum, can we approve limits? No. That's later in the agenda. So we can come back to that one. So let me have gender revision. Yeah. So we are going to move items 11A and 12... 11A, 12A, and 13A. And we will move 6A to the end. We'll do 12A without rocket. He sent us a write-up to share. Okay. Yes. If you all want to vote on anything, we can have discussion, but if you want to vote on action, we'll move that to 11A. 11A, 11A. I just wanted to give you all an update on the SAV composting resolution. So I've been meeting with Jim. Jim is going to present another special presentation at next week's Council meeting. So that's Tuesday, April 23. Yep. We're in April. I did want to note that Mayor Peck on the April 9 meeting did move and was approved to direct SAV to work with Boulder County on moving forward a regional composting facility, which is one of the primary actions that were called for in the composting resolution. So yay, that's great and exciting. So this county's composting relative to day one? Yep. Yeah, exactly. So the county's been in conversation about that for a while. Charlie and Nicole talked to you about that a little bit at the last meeting. So the Council did take action specifically to start to work with the county on moving that forward. So that's a great action item that preempts our composting resolution a little bit. But I just wanted to let y'all know that that is moving forward next Tuesday if anyone else would like to come and show their support. That would be great. Jim and I will be there. Jim, do you want to add anything? Yeah, well, I watched the video and I was like, yeah, well, yes, that's kind of exactly what we're hoping. So I'm not totally sure that what I thought I was saying is I think you get to kind of argue with them. But it's great that it's moving forward, I think. But once it moves forward, that's good. Right. Yeah. Do we know? I haven't heard anything about a timeline, a specific timeline. I don't know if you've heard anything about staff moving that forward. That would be mostly folks on the partly and folks on the sanitation side of things, but I'll move on that. I know the county is doing stakeholder engagement and we shared those surveys with y'all if you are participating in that and we'll continue to show their opportunity. And Jim, you and I can touch base. Yeah. So 12A, so Ralph attended and also Mary Lynn. So please feel free to share your thoughts as well. The Westminster Board of Environmental Affairs kind of regional environmental affairs sustainability meeting that happened in March. The same day as our last meeting. And Ralph was not able to be here with us but sent me this write up to read to y'all and then feel free to ask any questions we can have some discussion. And then folks, I want to get your feedback as well Mary Lynn and then we can discuss best ways to move forward. So on March 20th, Mary Lynn and Ralph Graswald attended in person the meeting coordinated by the Sustainability Board of Westminster. There are about 30 people in attendance from front-range communities including those staff and volunteer board members. A group of five to eight people sat at different tables and shared information about what their community was doing. Each table one representative notes. Ralph presented the priorities of the long line. Then each table representative presented an overview of what was to test the table. Since this was the format Ralph did not get to hear much about what other communities were doing other than those directly at the table like the staff which included Englewood, Geary and Westminster. Mary may have a different perspective based on the experience with her group but below are Ralph's impressions of the event. So first this is a confederation of different communities and different levels of sophistication regarding approaches to sustainability and environmental challenges. As such there is not a central mechanism of coordination at this time and there was not a suggested plan on going forward as to how we might coordinate interest and efforts. In subsequent meetings this could take shape but right now considering the varying interest Ralph isn't sure on how productive the initiative would be. Long line is very sophisticated in its approach to these issues whereas some of the communities represented at his table were still trying to get their city to adapt to centralized trash pickup. In addition Ralph heard but didn't get the details that at a governmental staff level there is some kind of creating group that interfaces with other communities in our area. I can share more information on that. It would help to know more about that. In our last two meetings I asked for any priorities our board may want to collaborate on with other communities to see what others were working on and then decide our level of interest in any particular issue. In conclusion, any coordination can be beneficial Ralph isn't sure at this point the initiative is the best vehicle to further the goals of the community. Mary may have additional comments or ideas and he's happy to continue to attend the Westminster meetings if the board would like representation. Mary if you want to share your perspective. Yes, so Longla and Boulder were both in attendance and we're Boulder Counties very much ahead of where the rest of the state or at least the front range sort of seems to be in a lot of initiatives and I sat at a table also that was staff members from I believe it was Westminster Colorado and Westminster, Boulder Field and they were all also working on universal hauler is the way that they put it centralized trash pickup and trying to deal with the fact that there's multiple providers and organizing that and they were looking at including recycling with that and my impression and they were all staff members and my impression was that most of the cities on the front range at least in this group have staff that are handling things that this board does and they're understaffed and they don't even have recycling in a lot of the cities so I did speak to those from Boulder who are very interested in soil very interested in new updated more sophisticated, more appropriate approaches to measuring sustainability they said that they believe that it's soil and it's water retention in soil and that we should scrap carbon because it doesn't make a lot of sense because we need carbon and since soil is an important is the most important carbon sink that we have any contact with not being landlocked state, not being near large bodies of water in the ocean water retention in the soil means that there's carbon re-retaining in the soil and the soil is healthy and thus the soil is acting as a carbon sink so I thought that was really interesting my husband then came down with me and he's a farmer and they loved having been there and they loved being on top of the farmer cell if there's still any recruitment going on for people to be on this board I think it would be really worthwhile to have somebody here who is working with soil and I think it would be very useful to continue to go to these quarter meetings simply to sort of set the benchmark Ralph was, I think I'm going to opine Ralph suggested that we come up with our punch list of most important projects and that we strategize on them together and I think that these overworked staff who weren't trying to get universal calling and supervising kind of gave him the deer and headlights look so you know Ralph so much heard he likes to get these kind of young people and I was looking at it and thinking was it worth it to continue to attend and share information and sort of like help just help to just build the community of information was the most important thing to me so not necessarily for our benefit so much is for the benefit of the other cities involved so that's my update Thanks Mary, I appreciate that Council Member Martin just to catch you up so we are moving some things around on the agenda to push informational items up until Kate comes at around five so that we have a quorum so that we can do building items and try to push our presentations a little bit later Thank you I'm getting stuck in the drive-through No problem, just wanted to catch you up wondering why we're at the end of our meeting already Yeah I look like that while we're interrupted I'd like to ask Mary for a clarification when you say not think about carbon are you talking about not trying to have the city reduce its carbon emissions from other sources or what exactly do you mean by not think about carbon so I believe first off I think we should ask Jonathan Cone to come talk to us he's the chief sustainable resource officer for the city of Boulder and he's the one who brought up this idea and I've been reading about it and I'd like to learn more about how Boulder is using this idea what is the idea it's the idea that measures of sustainability are transferred to using water retention in the soil versus carbon capture and carbon other methods as a primary measure of our sustainability so I would like to learn more from him and see how the city is actually making an applicable the more I learned about electrification and it seems to me that electrification causes more fracking because utilities everywhere are building more gas plants to be able to meet the demands of the grid I think we need to start looking at other ways to understand our responsibility in terms of stewardship with the soil and looking at other ways to manage our electric demand and electric grid so I was in a meeting we are participating in a Boulder County nature-based climate solutions group and Brett compared from the city of Boulder was that the meeting on Monday speaking to what you are talking about and it's not they are pursuing electrification and all the other mitigation measures that we are also pursuing they are talking about what Brett talks about and I am another chance to follow up with him is when we're talking about nature-based climate solutions from his research and the work that they are doing that it appears to be a more effective metric to look at soil health and water retention versus carbon sequestration opportunities because there is a lot of variability in that based on the research they have been doing over the last couple of years in terms of trying to understand the carbon sequestration potential and kind of the end of the day is we need to keep as much of it in the season plants and soil as we plan but that the soil health and water retention is a better metric of soil health so it's not necessarily carbon entirely as an understanding for how we are doing climate action but we are looking at the nature-based climate solution pieces that are understanding of the health overall and that fits to our ecosystem thank you so not moving away from electrification moving away from measuring emissions like tailpipe and gas stoves not even that but looking specifically at the opportunity and again this is my understanding based on this brief meeting we had the other day so I would love to talk to Brett more about that to see what the city of Boulder is doing on that front but it's looking at the when they've really been pushing it in addition to all of the technological pieces of the mitigation pieces this would be a mitigation component as well but valuing more strongly the nature-based climate solutions and the benefit and value that comes from that but the way that we've been talking about that in some spheres to this point is around carbon sequestration and he's kind of flipping that to say the more effective measure he's looking at soil health and water retention the more effective method of feasible carbon sequestration is for a long time and tree planting is another big one that folks are looking at among the current range yeah that's part of that whole nature-based climate solution there are a number of folks in fact there's even an office of what tree planting is called and I believe Lafayette or I believe it's Lafayette so yeah so this approach is sort of catching on yeah I was just going to say we had a couple years ago before COVID yeah and it was Brett Kenker and I think a lot of us are rightfully suspicious of carbon sequestration it seems like it's a way for a lot of large companies to say they're going to do something actually doing anything technology is not there but I also think that some of the ideas of sequestering significant amounts of carbon especially in the high plants tree planting are not also backed up by a lot of data restoring short grass prairies and all those other things are certainly there but yeah I would be interested to hear what they have to say now when Boulder presented here last time my view of it was how can, I felt that a lot of their strategies are how can we say that we're doing things without actually changing some of the fundamental problems that Boulder has not sustainability you know it's unbelievably expensive and everybody has to queue it everywhere and they said well if we can just keep our open space then that's what we're going to do so I'd be interested to hear what they've evolved on now so let's see from Boulder County Jonathan Coney's she's sustainably reasoning but City of Boulder is also a lecturer at the University we also talked a lot about farms and I picked up this crazy idea that I called Greater Bug because Denver has dug and I thought what if we collaborated across Boulder County to create an urban garden program and we thought that was a great idea so I think that there is an opportunity of collaboration right there and I mean I'm always using starting at home my own example we have a quarter acre lot that is just like it's wall to wall food growth you know and mostly pinealows, trees and so forth and I would love to see us really focusing on using the soil that we have you know it's the greatest impact that we can everywhere that we can and because of my background in communications I think that's the best way to sort of get people passionate about the soil and sequestration and trees and whatever is to have projects like that I actually really like the cross county garden idea because this is a suspicion based on stuff that I have working on land use commissioners and how they're treating their open space and stuff I'm really proud of the way Longmont Mass manages its open space which is mostly owned and Porter County a lot of their open space is just easements that prevent development but I feel without substantiations so I could be talking out the long end here but they are not as rigorous as they ought to be in terms of making sure that that open space is managed and used properly I have so much to say about that if you want to hear by one minute if you believe me that that's enough for now but this idea would be a way to get everybody involved in seeing that they do manage it a couple of things I'd be happy to invite somebody from the city of Boulder, Brett and or Donna that Brett is the one that leads that and it again is steeped in all of the research and he was the one who came so if I gave you a time to follow up because we never ended up doing anything with that because everything else got turned upside down there are some research studies I see that Francis pulled up some reports that we can share with you in the meantime that I think speak to some of the findings that Brett was sharing in this meeting the other day I do want to keep this on track for today because at first Kate just for your information may have to bump some things around on the agenda until we have a part so I'm excited that you're now here thank you so my understanding though there are also growing gardens which is the countywide urban gardening initiative I can't speak too much more to them but it's not something that at some point there's interested in pursuing oh we did back towards growing gardens and all that and we see how people do that so that could be an opportunity yeah and that's my background I've worked for the urban gardens for a long time so I'm going to share some of that as well I think with regards to the Westminster meeting it sounds like Mary if I'm understanding correctly they're just going to have quarterly meetings moving forward so we can continue to participate in that and as opportunities arise we can discuss them further I think you'll probably make some on that and then there is a both a regional quarterly sustainability group that is staff across the front range we get together quarterly we share information we talk about for projects we always look for opportunities for cooperation and then there's also a forward county group similarly so I stay in pretty good contact with the other groups in the county and along the front range we were we had the last meeting actually I'm not sure when our next meeting will be I'm wondering if we could miss that last one was just in March so our next one will be probably June or May, I'm not sure anyway I was just thinking that if you're already having a staff meeting at least a few staff people a lot of that meeting with staff people should we just combine them potentially that would be a decision for the broader front range group as well so that I can have you check in with folks our next meeting actually I think might be this Joe and I are continuing to at least participate in the quarterly meetings well we already voted to do it last time but we have to change that status I don't think we do I guess I'm well I don't have any objections we just we'll just force the word review on the committee then we'll do this person all the time all the time so that would have to be made okay so with that I want to go ahead and jump back if it's okay should we just do the 13 eight quick and then go back since you already moved that one down oh sure Councilman Martin, I just put on here a code of ethics that was shared I wasn't sure if there was any more context or anything that you wanted to share with this group but you all saw the email that went like that but yes Ralph it's a pity he's not here but he asked whether the changes would made members of this board liable if somebody objected to some to a city policy and he had is putting together a long research statement and answer that question but his off the cuff answer which is all I have at this point is that there's nothing in there that could make any of you any more liable than you already are which is kind of a Eugene sort of an answer but you know I'm not a lawyer answer is that the city council or the city manager or the chief of public safety are the authors of actions that could potentially make somebody say they've been harmed and I doubt if Mr. May will find that this board advisory board is powerful enough to be liable in any significant way but that was under the I'm not a lawyer to speak just so I'll let you know the Eugene names the city attorney oh sorry okay I will turn it back over to you sorry for the jumping around so we'll get back there's six okay so approval minutes from last meeting does anyone have any changes or corrections that needs to be amended do I count because that wasn't am I right though yeah both of you can we can still go on well if you watch the video there we go I just recommended some of this so it's in line to the last meeting second all those thank you alright so when we go to number eight so first we have transportation mobility sorry I don't agree more on the transportation planning management you know I just prefaced that by saying I managed to longer range pieces of transportation so if you have problems with that traffic light that doesn't turn green quick enough I can pass those on to people who know it better than I I think more of the long range piece of this and that's why we're going to talk about the transportation mobility plan tonight and more of that long range help but you'll see some stuff coming up pretty quick so we'll talk about that as well so I'm sure we'll talk about it how wonderful it is to see something happen quick it's going to be fun it's going to be too quick though watch I don't care we'll work it out so the mobility plan is really about more of that idea of let's start planning in 5 to 10 to 15 year 20 year recommence we're doing a lot of things that we can talk about later and we're having to come back and talk more about the projects we're going to talk to in the next 1 to 5 years but this is really about talking about looking further out and tonight we just want to talk about the project overview for the transportation mobility plan TMP is what we're calling it so that's kind of a standard across all the different jurisdictions so that's nice to just have people reference it back it's kind of a comprehensive plan for transportation we also want to talk about community outreach and existing conditions and the next steps so hopefully it can bear with some of that and have plenty of time for questions I hope it's a little project background we talk about the transportation mobility plan as far as what's its history and a lot of it is talking about the idea that we've been actually planning transportation since 1871 people who put the city together did a great job I think there's lots of debate about that but they did a great job of putting the streets together building that grid system that original model piece we built onto it the people who came after it built onto that there may not have been a specific transportation plan with that and so that didn't really happen until 2005 when we started talking about multi-modal and how things integrated with land uses so that first plan in 2005 was where we first floated into that and so I got to be able to do that as well so I've been here for 24 years so just to give you a little history of where I'm coming from from this our most recent plan is the 2016 Envision Longmont plan we incorporated the land uses for Envision Longmont which is the comprehensive plan for the city with the transportation pieces so we're really trying to put those things together and look at it more systemic than just transportation over here and land uses over here we look at parking, we look at streets so I want to read and start thinking about how this all worked together we have had a lot of changes and there's been a lot of discussion you'll hear some of the new things that we're talking about or micro transit which we hope to get off the ground in July we'll just see that's kind of pretty similar so those kind of things weren't even thought in 2016 well they were thought by somebody but not not more globally so it's been good to kind of bring those new elements into this transportation plan process so new ideas, new things coming along so it's been exciting and then we really need to set a roadmap for transportation based on based on what we have for available and potential resources so we really want to line it out so anybody from the public can come out and start to see what projects are going to be in my neighborhood in the next 5, 10 years maybe 15, maybe 20 as well but that 5 year kind of capital improvement program is what we're really trying to go to and so we want to make sure it's very clear where these projects will happen and what they're meant to be so hopefully that will be the end product when we get into this process so as you've done some public engagement pieces on the top you'll see more about that but we also want to get into that on top of what the public has told us so far so phase 1 was the winter and the spring capturing the feedback on the community's experiences and just getting an idea of where we can do better or where there's deficiencies for people identifying and we've put together that feedback on the job recognition so that'll all go into how we prioritize projects, we want to start to build some criteria based on the feedback we're getting from the public and kind of plug in projects with the criteria so we can evaluate the projects and see what they move up and down on the list a big key piece of this which we'll mention later but it's really the equity piece of this so that we're putting the resources where they are needed rather than just putting resources into projects that are popular or on the cusp of a lot of people talking about or things like that, we need to put them in places so maybe we heard a lot and clear from our E-CAT team which was great to go to was the idea that there's some places on the east side of town Martin and 9th was brought up specifically as a place where doesn't get a lot of attention but there's a lot of people trying to cross 9th at Martin so what can we do obviously the knee-jerk reaction was let's see how this goes through let's see if that makes sense or not maybe it's a better process treatment just for pedestrians so we don't have to stop the pedestrian you can have the pedestrians just go through without having to stop, we can put something like flashing signals there and just stop traveling there I get too excited about this give me the boring eye look or whatever I love talking about this the project the existing state of transportation of Longmont vision and goals we're putting that together now and then the draft recommendations for walking, biking, driving the prioritized list of capital improvement projects all the things I just talked about we'll be coming out in the summer so we're looking about this up and taking to council in the fall or it won't be the fall it won't be later we want to be quick it says winter but we'll be quick there's a word I don't see here which is community education because you get a lot of letters complaining about bicycles riding in the street like they assume that because there's a lane for bicycles in some places that somehow bikes aren't allowed to be in the street because frees are for cars that of course is wrong but there's only two things we can do about that we can complete the bike network so you never have to complete the bike pack which is almost impossible exactly that where you can put people back into their I think it's going on my driveway a 1968 mindset where a bike is a vehicle and you better treat on that way because people seem to have forgotten that that's a great point of the whole thing is to start setting up that education the other piece we're not going to talk about but it's going to be the background piece of all of this is council has adopted vision zero so the idea that zero deaths are the only accepted number that we can have of people dying on our roadways or walkways or whatever any kind of travel mode we don't accept any deaths part of that's going to be that's a huge education component we're going to share a lot of that with vision zero so the outreach phase in February we did do a lot of work to do an open house you'll see that I won't go through all of this because I don't it's pretty long we've got great people coming up next to talk to you as well so I want to make sure that we get through this but I won't read all of this just to say that we have had a thousand engagement points so far a lot of that has been in survey responses so through our website we had 297 people put dots on a map to tell us where they thought there were some deficiencies or maybe there were some good things too so we got a little both but most of them were deficiencies so we did have 55 people attend our open house which is pretty good a pretty full room it was pretty exciting but obviously it was that open house kind of led us to the survey response and opening up to the web and getting that information out which I think is what people really talk to us and you'll see some other ones too we had a bike to work in a winter bike to work in we had 30 people show up that was pretty exciting not a great day but it was a new day so it was nice so this just kind of reiterates a lot of that information so we've got a lot of stuff on Engage Longmont so if you do get a chance to do the Engage Longmont website we're the first thing on the list there so that's pretty exciting we've talked to a number of groups we still need to do a better job with our center for people with disabilities unfortunately that day we were going to meet with them and why it's still on this list was the same day that represented from the Goose game and gave us a giant check for a million dollars for micro-transits thank you yeah but that was unfortunate we've got E kind of mention other layers of things all folks to my right so thank you and the bike to work can I just say with the acronym I could go with the climate action oh I thought I just made a mistake sorry about that this is not a great picture but a good picture of showing all the different such points that we got from folks some of those 297 297 dots that we'll put on the map this kind of gives you an idea of kind of spatially where those comments were from around the city so we were probably a little deficient out here it looks like or maybe everything's really great out here so we'll kind of figure that out but you can see where the bulk of things are in the downtown we did get some surprising pieces and then a lot of folks came out about the 17th and Holwood intersection we just recently had pretty bad crash out there that was I want to say almost self reduced is that around 66 up there? 66 yeah would be right up here yeah you're right that's going to be an airport right there excuse me the big one yeah what did I say over? I'm sorry so there's been some pretty big concerns out there with West Union School and those kind of things it makes sense a lot of stuff at 119 and Holwood down here too we're going to be spending a lot of money on that intersection the next two years to see that help to improve that too a lot of fun things going on if I could just put one thing on the previous slide that those pale spots out at 119 and County Line Road there there's a lot of people who are unhoused or staying in the extended stays that are out there and stuff and they couldn't come in for this wreck because they can't get there so I would maybe deepen those dots just based on anecdotal evidence on another reason why we went out sorry the downtown block what's the northern terminus of that, what's that street I'd say it's about 11th happening probably right here it's 11th and then it goes down to about 3rd it goes down to about 1st yeah it's right here it's pretty close to and is that parallel or a bike there's a bike down here I'm sorry this one's a little hard so you can imagine a lot of comments about congestion in here so one interesting thing is that congestion really does help it reduces crashes there's a lot of issues trying to balance all these different things 66 as well well because people go so fast there's no congestion, there you go yeah you do get you get to know how many people call about how terrible it is to try to go on that road because it's so congestive you have the interest to see another car right our respondents to the surveys as you can imagine skew a little bit because of just how we've done it basically with computers it's been a computer base so you have that access to the internet and so we do get some of these people our highest number of respondents earned over $150,000 for the household the 35 to 44 group was the biggest number from the age group and that bike obviously was the group that responded to our survey team so we're doing more of that outreach now as we see what we've done as a cross section and we're trying to pair that and tie it more into our make up as a city to better understand that you can probably imagine that a lot of folks I think this is going to be the thing where you go up yep yep most people drive along or with family members 77% basically 14% we have a pretty good community but this is pretty low and so I'll just look at the other things as well what are the biggest challenges associated with walking or using a wheelchair in Longmont non-existent or insufficient sidewalks number one and two there are locations with non-existent or insufficient crossings streets are uncomfortable people aren't safe to walk so I'll do the kind of the top three of these but travel distances are too long it's also a number close to number four there because challenges associated with bicycling or scooting in Longmont streets are unsafe uncomfortable trails do not go where I want them to go I cannot safely get to the multiple age trails and insufficient or poorly marked bike lanes is also pretty high up on this too I think we can all agree I think our community when I ask people do you generally agree with this I think everybody has their head nodding pretty well on the list biggest challenges associated with taking transit in Longmont you can guess this one too the bus doesn't go where I want it to go the bus doesn't come frequently enough the bus doesn't run earlier or late enough so there's also some safety concerns there so we've got to cognizant of that the biggest challenges associated with driving in Longmont, too much traffic which is interesting there are no challenges with driving in Longmont was the second answer so yeah and other we need to delve into trying to figure out what better is in your opinion what are the most important factors the city should consider when prioritizing transportation projects and spending improving biking by filling gaps between existing dedicated bike facilities is number one answer to provide a balanced transportation system that provides connectivity and comfortable options for all roads yes improved traffic flows and reduced traffic congestion which is interesting because we just talked about those challenges improved biking by adding more dedicated biking speeds so these are the key themes so I probably should just skip right to this one because this is really the one where speeding is an issue you'd like to see more enforcement and hear that all the time I think too support and desire to be inclusive of all roads and transportation so really giving that choice with the people so they can choose different roads of transportation yeah that makes sense because right now it seems like one road would make sense and not others just that in transit options are inadequate this is true we're hoping that micro transit helps fill some of those gaps in the city because what it's worth to do is where there's not good transit get you a chance to get those first and final mile connections so can you just talk briefly about what micro transit is yeah just briefly so basically micro transit is the idea of kind of placing an Uber or a Lyft type system that would have kind of one cost $100 per trip instead of doing it by demand there would just be a fixed cost on that so you could call in you could use your phone to hail a ride if you use a phone basically any language that you speak will be translated into the request so we all have that capability of the city as well we have a wide language base where we can almost any language so within 15 minutes of doing that white hailing piece one of these vans basically a 68 passenger van it's branded with the city logo we'll get a great name we'll go into the public and try to figure out some great names for this service but within 15 minutes this van will come within a couple of blocks of your house so you may be asked to like leave it out with some other people and you may have to share a ride and then within 15 minutes of being picked up and being taken you may have to drop off people at different places too it's almost like a car, a chair, a car pool type piece but within 15 minutes you'll reach a destination and they may not be able to take you to the city but they may be able to connect you with existing transit services they're not going to be able to take you anywhere in the whole region we're looking to expand that because we're getting a great new mobility hub at 119.25 in a couple months so you're not spreading that together or building it and once that's complete we'd like to get people out there because there's a great bus service directly to Fort Collins so it'll be wonderful to get out there sure lack of safe bicycle facilities I'm not sure about the skull and cross bus again, I haven't talked about that yet I feel like that happened but lack of connecting a bike network so you hear a lot of bicycle things here but if you want to be able to bicycle better across town this is kind of interesting these are regional travel patterns based on connected vehicle technology so when your car has built-in navigation system you're giving information to the world in case you didn't know we used to use the phones which I thought was a lot more interesting because you'd get walking data bicycling data, car data bus data kind of things because you could tell when a bunch of phones were the same you didn't kind of move at the same speed or maybe a bus have you seen that guy who uses his phone GPS to draw the dinosaurs with his bike? oh yeah, yeah so we found out that a lot of folks go in between or come from from Boulder for the Boulder 119 corridor so great that we're going to build bus traffic transit the next few years along that corridor a lot of folks coming from North Weld County which is interesting and from South Weld County and then Lerner County so that's a lot of the folks that are doing regional travel into our town when they show up in town they go to the southwest part of town for those regional trips and even to the north part of town which is interesting a lot of folks from we thought the downtown would be more of a destination for regional trips but I think what this might be looking at is more community times and so this is work trips more likely so is it going to pretty much to our tech corridor our little silicon alley or whatever yeah, that's great here's some interesting information too that 70% of the trips that started in Longmont also are in Longmont so we've got a lot of internal trip making being done and when you see what happens a lot of internal southwest to southwest internal trips a lot of southeast southwest trips you can kind of see what's going on there here's the biggest number though that I think is really telling of Longmont it's almost 80% of the trips in Longmont are between 1 and 5 miles long so if we can get people on bikes if that was more comfortable if we can get people into this micro transit which I think is going to be very comfortable and safe those can really start to take over all those trips walking trips and other just like that 11% of the trips are less than 1 mile so clearly walking trips that can be made there and there are no trips downtown that's why I always wonder about this this seems to just show people rotating around the downtown and I'm like that doesn't make sense to me but I had a lot of questions to our consultants about the reliability of this data and how we can get better more consumer layers on top of this this is from street lights data which is they've been forced to go away from the phone based piece and go to this connected vehicle which is more of an source data for open data I'm doing the same thing how much of this is delivery that's a great question you know like Amazon pizza I think they're trying to stay away from that component and go to private vehicles and not commercial vehicles with this data all important but still a soft shell I think it's really important for me what I did today was I'll be honest with you I couldn't pay my consultants to come to every advisory board for the city in their place so I apologize for not having all the info behind this data we'll get it for you we can get that so the roadway network I think you pretty much realize this but it's kind of good to see the different speed limits that we have the different types of collectors arterial our roadway network basically how it's operating today one of the big components of vision zero is going to be to go with three minutes coming to town and you see a thing that says unless otherwise posted 25 miles per hour what are we going to do then look at all our streets so this will be a great baseline to start with because there's going to be a significant amount of traffic calling at all I live off 21st 35 miles an hour from over to Francis people just drive race down that all the time because it's this big open street well and I know that one of the earlier slides had people wanting more enforcement with speed limits it seems a way to not have to have more people out getting tickets and slowing people down just to make the roads a little windy we are actually 21st as an example because we're talking about taking away this direction taking that lane on the outsides in both directions because it seems like traffic calling is easier for people to walk and everything you slow people down it's a way to accomplish a lot of those things without having to necessarily rely on just giving people a bunch of tickets but also looking at a number of places for new roundabouts so that seems to be very popular as far as being able to slow people down and actually teachers and all that and both of them and one of the big barriers for walking especially in the summer here is just how little shade there is if you're trying to walk it seems like having calling features nature features green buffers, trees things that can damage cars, slow them down one of the things we made sure of to be in the new standards well this is standards on a number of years ago was to make sure that every sidewalk built in town was detached so that you had a tree lawn we could put trees we'd be responsible basically because it would be within the right of way so that's great go ahead when gypsies traffic calling I know that what you mean are physical barriers I've looked at how Vision Zero has played out in cities that have had it for a long time and unfortunately they seem to be very heavily focused on surveillance and what's happening with that data is no bueno now the companies that have developed these cameras are also developed the AI analysis and the automatic tickets that remove people from the any part of the process so there's really no judicial review on it and the evidence seems to be that when people are living in an area where there's more cameras they feel less secure because it's more alienating and I feel more paranoid and I would rather see as much as possible efforts made to make people right because they simply can't make a bad decision because there's curve and there's bushes you can't see around maybe as easily and there's an electric I mean have you guys seen the electric stop signs you know I think that that stuff really makes more you haven't seen those there's one out on 17 is it on 17 17 I'll buy McIntosh Lake when people used to smash into those million dollar houses like Yards all the time I thought it was hilarious when I first thought I was like everyone's dating so yeah as much as possible I really and every time Harold talks about his smarts he said this at a city a coffee with council he said when we talk about smart cities we're talking about surveillance cameras and we were all like oh we don't want any more of that take those out I bicycle a lot around town and here at other places the basic rule that most cyclists believe is that anything that drivers are more concerned about damaging their car than they are about hitting somebody and so if you have things that can damage cars it slows people down we just have to kind of measure that and we're balancing we are hurting people with that because if we are a vision zero city we just need to make sure we're balancing all those different pieces that's why we're talking about reducing the wavelengths where it's practical and we're doing some moving people through probably on this we get a lot of resistance from our public safety folks for a lot of that too so we're working with them to have those conversations and just talk about we're reducing crashes that means you don't have to do all these calls so hopefully we can it's all a balancing act so just to public safety do you want more cameras basically I think the police probably do for just they're using them for tracking stolen vehicles through town right now so they can track the license plate and just watch it where they turn and once it kind of triggers the system they can figure out if that's a stolen car or not we're getting a lot of crashes happen and what's going on with the crashes and so there's a lot of that technology that we have not inserted the idea of speed cameras or the red light cameras just for those very concerns and for the idea that early on 10 years ago when this kind of started out and Boulder really jumped on it jumped on that technology was that there's a lot of almost like scam artists that were just doing this to get the money for the company right and so we got a piece of that ticket but they really wanted a larger key they wanted to make money so we kind of shined away from it for those reasons it didn't seem I looked at Aurora which when we lived there it was considered the most smart city city in terms of traffic safety in the whole country so we moved because we would be going home one mile of the speed limit and we'd get a little ticket with a picture of us going and it was just so car bomb we were like this is really unnecessary we get perfect driving records I think what we're looking for is maybe red light running cameras because that's part of the safety issue there are more crashes, more crashes, rear end crashes but the severity of the crashes are reduced when you have a red light camera so that's part of that vision zero aspect we need to work with all the different departments to get going I think based on my conversation about smart city technologies what they really want is fewer traffic stops and fewer chases because those are dangerous for everyone to discern and so if you get that done with street design or if you get that done with automation they probably don't care which they just don't want to have people up because every time somebody has stopped trying to pull somebody over and somebody over is trying to fill them and fill them and all that stuff then they can't call a domestic, respond to a domestic abuse call so that's the point we just have more data for you but this is all the kind of existing conditions we're just measuring all the different speeds the off-peak, the peak and the difference in those is kind of a very light bar so you can kind of see where there's little differences highway 66 was found so but this is just all going to go into our idea of how we do the roadway network, what needs to be looked at the roadways, bicycle network shows all our different ones this is more traditional pieces I'm just looking at all what we have we have a lot more buffered bike lanes than we've ever had before so that's exciting those are coming on, that wasn't something we talked about much in 2016 either we have a couple of underpasses that are being constructed so they aren't here yet but we've got some good things going off the east side of town to connect these links pedestrian network we really just wanted to see where we have the same sidewalks based on that sidewalk issue of not connected and we think we can do a pretty good job of connecting some of our sidewalks are deficient and that they're not wired so it's very hard to walk even 2x2 on a sidewalk which is interesting but we do have some of this in a sidewalk we just finished a project on 17 it's just east of Hover which has been amazing it's a really good connection that we've been looking forward to in a long time our transit network is pretty pretty slim so we are going to supplement this you do see that we have an RTD FlexWide service over the entire area and the micro transit we'll supplement that quite a bit we're hoping to almost take that over and get rid of the FlexWide and have that put more resources into our micro transit service based on that so we're working with them on how micro transit will take care of that go ahead micro transit isn't going to do the door through door so when you don't completely get rid yeah, VIA will be out there still, those smart vehicles that do the door to door service for people with disabilities and people who hold a population trying to make appointments to different medical departments and shopping I remember this from previous meeting we talked about the different routes that the buses go and down and then it's actually because it's part of the RTD the city has limited kind of say and how the routes are arranged am I remembering that correctly that's absolutely correct do we have an opportunity to try to work with them in less city ways we do have a lot of opportunities to make that work and RTD just presented our transportation advisory board on Monday and they said how great it is to work with the city and I went there and they said yeah we work with you and we put our input in but then it always boils down to resources and they always say well you can't extend the route any further than this because of resources well, how do we work with you to build better routes we want more frequencies on different routes we think a 15 minute headway coming by every 15 minutes going one southbound main street makes a lot of sense we think a lot of people would take that just trying to there's a kind of a blinded headway there and they see that and they realize that there's just not the resources to put out there right now you'll see that we have a lot of loops and weird little things that just kind of end and that's not the way we envision the system our idea is to start with micro transit and work our way into the transit realm a little bit that way I think the key piece here too will all change with the bus rapid transit it's going to be in 2027 so we will get a route that goes out to the east side of town we'll have more frequency on some of these buses to get people into what's going to be the first main station right here so this will all change in the next few years this just kind of gives you the idea of how much ridership we have this is interesting because there's almost as many people per day on the 324 local bus it is on the Bolt between Boulder and Longmont so we do have a free bus service in town and I hope everybody knows that we... so she knows all about that but this is what's kind of out there you'll see some of these very deficient routes unfortunately we have this LV it says Longmont to Denver but it's only more like Longmont to Bloomfield so that's where we get to Denver which is painful here's our flex route so this carries these buses do pretty well this is a bus that comes from Fort Collins so we work with a completely different transit agency on this on the flex route so they come... obviously they just have two stops well they have three stops in town but one of them is kind of more for the Boulder down or going all the way to town so we can't go to Boulder on this bus even though it goes to Boulder you're not supposed to use the RTB system which is hard to me you can't do it but it's all based on the drivers so that's kind of nice here's a little bit more about the safety pieces that this is really going to feed into our vision zero but it really is important to ATMP as well the idea of bicycle involved collisions so really a concentration on this Main Street corridor from 17th basically on the north to about our downtown maybe Longstreet on the south looks like there's little pieces out in different areas kind of up here at 66th and Main too and then all along the Main Street corridor traditionally involved collisions again Long Main Street around 17th and then south of downtown or in downtown down to 3rd Avenue basically so between 3rd and Longstreet and 3rd and 5th so you can kind of see that crash types this is just going to help us more about the crash data piece a lot of rear end crashes as you can imagine it's the one where we start talking about broadside crashes those are the ones that get pretty dangerous and that's where people start to spend time in hospitals or end up losing a lot of money so those are critical tasks to reduce those in the next set of vision zero keys so we do have a new vision zero coordinator who started working with us in February and we do have an action plan that's going forward we're going to get that action plan done and that will give us the ability to access resources money so we'll have more money to be able to spend on these things then the next steps we need to put together that vision and goals for this project make sure that we're all aligned as a community on those develop those recommendations for bicycle walking, transit, the vehicle network and then programs and policies the ideas we will want to flip the script we always talk about kind of cars first and then buses and then bikes and then walking we want to flip that script so it's walking first bicycling transit and then even before personal automobiles getting freight delivered through town as we talked about earlier and then the personal vehicle so we'll be back here to talk to stakeholders we do have a member on that working group so we'll be getting together again in the next couple weeks here in the next couple months to get back together and start to work on these vision and goals you said there's somebody from this group who's on that? yeah I'm trying to remember who it is Charles we're going to be a new person yeah we didn't hear him or anything he's moving away that's good to know so how does that happen is that something that we formally decided that somebody from this group was in charge I think Charles volunteered if you were asked to volunteer that's a lot and then there will be opportunities for Phil to come back to this group also okay asking for a volunteer and hopefully when you have recommendations and stuff like that I volunteered to go to Retro's place until we get somebody else who's on that side of the system which is not me hopefully we answered all your questions during the presentation so if there are any other follow-up questions let me know or feel free to give them to these friends that's super informative thank you for your time I have one last question about this and it's an intersectional question there just seems to be so much context right now about HOAs and obviously this intersects a lot with transportation because it's more the HOAs to put in various kinds of islands I don't know what they're called strips along the roads and so forth do you have any conversation with the HOAs? and I know that a lot of people kind of pull up turf and so on and so forth and as you bring in more buses and more roundabouts and such what are the issues that are coming up with the HOAs and whether it's going to be some just because I'm trying to learn about all things HOAs right now yeah I'm not hearing that as much so most of the issues with HOAs right now seem to be allowing for accessory volume units and more density within subdivisions so that's what we're really dealing with HOAs is how do they change their rules to be able to allow that to be the city that allowed for it and anybody can do it until you get to the HOA level of politics and so that's the point that we're really struggling with right now is it going to change it's also going to change parking too and then again a lot of that open space that they have in the HOAs again like I talked about the rolling strips and so forth a lot of that stuff's going to have to be taken up but more parking and such right so we're actually getting rid of we're going to get rid of parking minimums so we're not going to as a city force folks and this is even new to our council member because we're going to bring back two resolutions now instead of just the one because our internal working group of city departments came up with the idea that maybe parking maximums maybe we're ready for parking maximums only so they're going to get rid of parking minimums so we're going to bring that to council May 14 who was nervous about parking minimums okay you wouldn't doubt them but yeah I'm glad they were convinced yes we convinced folks so we're going to get rid of all parking minimums so the city will no longer say you have to put in this much parking for even multi-family residential we're going to let the developers tell us how much parking they think they need if we see that it's going to impact the neighborhoods that we're going to make a do parking study to prove to prove to us that that's what's needed but we're going to put caps on parking from here on out are you sure this is what the public wants because I've heard people come I've heard some whole neighborhood come to the company council I think it was the last one and they were completely freaked out because there was no parking in that neighborhood there was no place to have to park we didn't even design that way I understand that this is very popular in civic planning right now and transportation and interview policy but I don't think it's what the public wants right we're having lots of conversations so it's also has come up in my neighborhood in multiple instances that much from this land parking because you know there's been instances of trying to put in developments where there was only like the houses in that housing units would actually have a parking space that would cramp the neighborhood and I'm just really concerned about this that's very understandable I think that's why we got to the place where we did with our city set because there was this huge concern every time that we try to bring data to the conversation we hope that that helps but obviously there's that perception that it's that's not going to work so we're just trying to get through that perception level with the data and so trying to prove to folks that really a lender won't give money to a development that can't prove that it has enough parking what is a lender? a lender a bank will not lend dollars to especially in cities like Walmart but they perceive this as having great transit yet so what we're trying to do is supplement these gaps with better transit and we're hoping that people can actually make that next step of do I have to own three vehicles or two vehicles or even one vehicle for my family to get around or can I do it in these other ways and obviously if you don't have great transit and bicycling options a car is your only way you've got to store that car somewhere those conversations that we're trying to have with folks and so places that are not very transit rich we may have to look at that parking differently than places along the downtown corridor where we have lots of transit walking and places that are there's I think another thing which is that for new developments our planners will make sure that the street design and the path design and the greenway connectivity and all of that are going to automatically be an improvement over how things are in the old neighborhoods and they can require as long as our code is clear enough and we're working on it at our group though but you know that we won't have to fight with the HOA that comes after because it's already going to be right so and I think Joey can't tell us can't tell people how park or how many parking spaces per room I think it's the people who move there and they say why is there no parking per neighborhood we didn't realize this at the time this is a food problem the specific thing that was said by these folks they're actively moving the developments by 66 of its town halls and they said our driveways are just on drives into the garage there's no place to park a car in the driveway and there's no place to park cars on the street and the development behind us they're planning and putting in you know as dense as we have with less parking available and I just I don't think that people want that here and so when you say new developments A what new developments would run a kind of land and B it seems like there's an awful lot of remediation that has to happen right now so it's happened to help people be really adequately surveyed sorry to cut off the conversation but I do have another presentation that I want to get to but if you all have other thoughts please feel free to email myself or Bill and I'll coordinate with Bill on when somebody will come back later in the process thanks thanks thanks no more sense no I know this is the most the most the most the most the most the most beautiful this is the most mouthful of the title when I was like what do you want me to call it it's terrible there's no other way to say that so how come people think they get to move over other people's land okay sorry I'm going to move y'all on hi everybody I'm Hannah Mulroy I'm the energy portfolio development manager for the city of Longmont I know you know Susan fairly well she's my direct supervisor so I work on Susan's team energy strategy and solutions I haven't had a chance to be in front of you I spoke briefly about DERs a few months back when I had a short opportunity but I'm really glad to be here today I don't want to say this negatively but I wish I was here to talk about all the really exciting DERs that we're doing but this really is a little bit more procedural rulemaking just kind of getting some underlying things that we've identified as some gaps in our current policies and rain compositions for solar as well as renewable power purchase program I'm going to go through some things with you today on this and had a pretty good discussion we've gotten some feedback from them that we are working on so there will be some changes to this as time goes on but this is where we're at now and I'm going to try and explain it to you as best as I can we'll go for that briefly I just want to say what we're going to talk about today is I'm going to start with just the timeline of where we're at now and my plan is to do the summer kind of our public engagement and what I expect to return to council I'm going to talk to you about interconnection standards so how we connect distributed energy resources to our electrical grid and then the solar rate analysis which has two components the amount we pay for net access energy coming off the solar systems as well as our renewable power purchase program that folks subscribe to so that folks covered up for that last item so just now I want to talk about where we are now we're at the third bullet so we went to council retreat back in February to do a distributed energy resources it kind of touched on lightly the fact that we needed to look it up and modify modernizing our interconnection standards our solar rates and our we went back to them last week with some recommendations so that's what we've been through now we're in the public engagement stage I don't actually have my public engagement slide on this but I'll let you know your third body I'm coming to outside of council my intention is to spend the next three months going to quite a few other entities sustainability coalitions, sustainable resilience long mat, equitable climate action team and some others that I feel are never getting one sustainability coalitions because of a bunch of jokes we're also going to be reaching out to solar installers, people in the permitting pipeline we're going to go to newspapers, blogs sustainability newsletter so everything you hear today we're going to spend the summer really getting the news out there as best as we can that's what we're considering changing now we're going to go for council direction and ordinance approval this is pending that we're on our current timeline and nothing changes dramatically over the summer in the budget season so kind of later this summer early fall because other things do with rates and money come through then we're going to return to council for further discussion let them know what we've heard from the public and then if they're feeling comfortable seek direction from them to prepare ordinance if we need more time we'll save more time then we have planned to come back and do some pretty complex education hate these changes are actually happening please get in your permit or please do your connection whatever we want to kind of let folks know the intention as of now is that any changes we're talking about today are proposed to take it back January 1st of next year so we want to take the summer to get feedback and then come late fall this I'm sorry late summer fall we know the changes are happening really put out a message that January 1st is the date that the changes the rules are changing all right what are we talking about interconnection so interconnection policies are guidelines for how distributed energy resources are connected to our electrical grid in this case our distribution electrical grid I want to clarify the term distributed energy resources is pretty broad catch all terms so it often means thermostats and water meters and EVs and all these things in this case we really do mean what we call bi-directional distributed energy resources so solar energy battery storage and eventually vehicle to grid charging if that's a thing it's anything that's got a back feed on to our grid because that provides a whole lot of other things we have to look at in terms of the ability to serve them safety and otherwise we need to make sure systems shut down please shut down so really we're looking at those systems and back feed and we have kind of unclear inconsistent policies and we find some of the percent barriers to development by causing delays where increases are lost so generally we have interconnection policy goals that we want to enable distributed energy resources while also protecting our safety and our grid we want to align with regional and state interconnection standards for consistency so currently some of our standards are off of what other utilities have so its colors don't necessarily know what to expect so we can standardize modernize some of our standards next one we want to modernize standards to address emerging technologies that demand response opportunities specifically our current standards are going with solar generation or generation and do not address battery storage and we need to address battery storage we want to provide flexibility in our standards particularly when it comes to solar generation to enable building in the transnational electrification so we want both fields to produce enough energy on site to serve their needs we want to update standards to allow the faster review and fewer failed permits currently we are failing a decent amount of permits on 120% so we don't allow generation rules so folks are coming in not generally asking for 200% usually it's like 136 or 147 late they want just a little more than we're able to give them and I have no release felt currently to let them do that and it's something that I would like to change that we that generally comes to me for a decision and then we want to establish equitable provisions to require engineering studies for distributed energy resources both a big one so but also a bunch of solar happening on one feeder for example right now we're looking at a kind of case by case we haven't seen a lot of big installations but we are expecting big installations so we need to be able to say hey you got to go pay for and do a system impact study and tell us what kind of upgrades might be needed in the case of big installations for example small installations how can we help those residents make those improvements and not hit the last person on the line everybody else could do it but not the last guy we have a study that I had a time with some system impacts that was the fault so I have a wish this was a little bit bigger top five told you my best but essentially I've identified what was when we came to council five shortcomings and now they're six and five proposed stages to adjust those shortcomings currently as I mentioned solar generation is limited to 120 percent of annual consumption we would like to increase that to a system size of 12kw or 200 percent whichever is greater generally speaking from our knowledge for councils is similar 12kw what we intend to do is if you put a 12kw system or less from a consumption standpoint we're going to improve you we're not going to ask for an assumption number if we're just 12kw under we're good still going to look at transformer, conduit, panel all of that but basically if you have 12kw or less we're not going to pay you for anyone who wants a little bigger system which does happen we will look at the 200 percent rule and then we also have no provision for new construction new ownership or electrification and I actually have some further information on this so what we'd like to do is allow a 6kw each per square foot for new construction new ownership or adoption of electrification measures so what that is essentially is that we do an analysis of 23,000 single family homes in the city and as to figure out how much they use per square foot this includes new homes, old homes bad envelopes all electric we found small liars all gas whatever the case may be and a 6kw per square foot would serve the typical home at 200 percent if we go a little bit higher than that we'd actually be more at 6 percent we figure about 50 percent people would already potentially be going over 200 percent so we might not want to go any more generous with that and the third thing which I correct to mention, I had an old Barney Fogger council last week, what Barney Fogger does is that currently we have no variance procedures for folks who want to electrify I'm a new owner, I have an EV, I got a heat pump you know I need all these things and we're just like well you need to prove it to us, show us that we want a variance process that allows folks to show us that communication that they're installed a heat pump, an EV, whatever the case may be and that they need a bigger system we have language and every administrative approval of a larger system size we're kind of trying to do what we do to deal with an average person and then have them release out for those which we have and I understand that people are frustrated so again so we have no system I said this before, the standards are limited to only generation, not battery storage or other distributed energy resources so we need to include other DERs, we've got to expand it to battery storage and bi-directional EV charging again it's not actually fully viable at any sort of commercial level or programmatic level but we do anticipate in the future these worlds would also apply to that, that use no provisions for engineering studies so what we're planning to do is or we've already worked on in my engineers over there is the Law, Mind, Distributed Energy Resource Interconnection Standards document as some of you may be aware a lot of our development, the outside kind of standard document, this is how you build road this is how you do all the works we're going to do a similar thing where we have the code will say, you need to interconnect please go see these standards and we have a little avoid page standards document list and kind of FAQ's related to it but it really is protecting it for experts and it has all the provisions of what you need to do to provide us a study what we're looking for from your study what you know how can you mitigate impacts on the grid, who's responsible for what we have system size threshold so certain system sizes again as we start applying for systems we'll trigger additional things such as a production year so that's all kind of contained in there and the ordinance is going to really simplify to just kind of go see the standards and then last one is that we lack industry standard communications or data protocols so we don't have anything that says your DVR has a talk to us in our way your solar has to tell us that your battery has to tell us this and we want to be able to tell you something we want to establish industry standards communication protocols for grid monitoring, signaling, and future VPP or demand response so we want to be able, oh your EVs there your batteries there can we fall on it you're going to tell us how full it is what the industry standards was thank you, it's a demand response opportunities but it's too long to manage do you have a question? I have a colleague who can talk speaking with setting standards especially regarding interconnect I have a colleague who can talk about nothing about grid forming inverters and I understand the role of the grid forming inverter if I live on 40 acres out east and I don't want a provider at all I just want to get on the transmission lines that I understand I don't understand the role of such devices where you have a hybrid situation where you're generating part of your own electricity you want a distribution grid as well I can think of at least one application someone else can tell me if they want but if we were to develop any microcarbons within the city where they're primarily served but say they want a 5-megawatt battery and a 1-megawatt solar to serve this thing that would be if they want to be able to serve right out of blackout or something like that we want that to be grid forming inverters our power shut off automatically anti-idol and it doesn't get back to you grid forming inverter we haven't seen any applications of that yet but I have seen it in my early microgrid we may if the sugar ever gets ever gets resolved then those are very progressive developers and they will probably like grid forming inverters and we haven't seen any from modern Moscow but I know they're thinking of some pretty radical stuff energy-wise up there and we'll know more usually grid forming inverters and we would also expect to maybe have a big battery installation that it becomes grid forming that serves as a backup generator without that we've been feeding it to the grid we haven't necessarily, it's not a prohibition to have one right sorry I'm looking at Frank because we know we're both inverters and my name is Frank Mandauer I'm a senior electrical engineer and we're one of our power communications and I helped work with the DER there are certain ways that grid forming inverters can connect to the system and still maintain operational status if the grid goes down and do so safely and that's something that is covered in our interconnection standards it just depends on the characteristics of the specific interconnection details so we would have to look at that but there's nothing that would prohibit that from being improved as long as it meets the standards so it's not going to push back too hard or anything like that make a mess it is to your point of view more of a rural application but there are certain circumstances and maybe at our own facility that we would want a battery with a grid of converters that we could write out of age since we've brought up retrofits have you considered the inputs that want to retrofit to create a microgrid same block we have yet to be approached by anything like that we might we would certainly need the standards and you're going to need the inverters so as Frank said it would be covered in here they would come and say hey we want solar or we only want battery and then you're going to work with them on the inverter specs as part of the permitting interconnection and study to show that they have the correct inverters and so is I'm presuming that there's going to be some work with budgeting so that if a neighborhood wants to or if a block wanted to do that there would be some capacity within the city to help build those specs for that or did the neighborhood have to build it all? I can't speak to financial support regarding developing microgrids I'm just wondering if there's been communication about that again that's something we've been approached about so we have to have conversation we are okay so I just think there should be yeah further conversations I just wanted a little more clarification on the question so if there was a block that wanted to microgrid I'm curious what the support would be at LPC for putting that together that's basically the most simple way to put it developing this back developing the plan if there's any help that just seems like there's always technical things there's definitely technical assistance always available to our developers so if they came to us wanting to achieve that we would work with them very closely to achieve that but as far as designing the system I think that would happen outside whatever the design partner was proposing but we wouldn't curious yeah it's for Jean Berg we said hey maybe you should do it this way so we knew about that kind of cooperative relationship okay I think that is all on my interconnection and the solar rate potentially could be seen as a little more complicated so I'm going to move on to the solar rate unless we have any more information I've done a little bit more of a truncated version of this if you want more information the full presentation was presented to the council but I tried to keep it a little bit simpler today than it has been so we included two I work very closely with our rates manager over there we're really closely with their rates team for quite a period of time now I'm almost my two years with LPC on doing the credit rate for net metering or what we call the solar rate analysis and then also looking at a renewable power purchase program which is the voluntary program folks those by jail for participating I should say I'm going to take a moment I'm sure most of you know this but I'm going to take a moment to level set on what net metering is and why there are some potential equity or equitable considerations that need to be talked about with this so currently the city buys our city credits both are residential and commercial customers for their net excess energy so they use they produce more energy than they use any month and here we also credit that to that on retail we don't have as many customers that haven't had to make it yet but that month currently is retail like I said also the customers receive a retail credit for all the energy they produce and consume on site what that's trying to say and maybe not the best way I know how that's written is that essentially is what I call a site to get inherently retail for everything you consume so when your solar is produced and you're consuming you're not buying one kilowatt hour of retail so we really do try and encourage folks to consume what they use on site to the best of their ability and this doesn't go too much for the store what's possible we are looking at opportunities to incentivize and support battery storage and that would help bolster the economics because anything stored or consumed on site is retail the city pays a premium to customers for net metering credits above what we would otherwise pay back of the power authority for the same energy to pay this credit comes out of the pocket of all of our rate payers and takes away revenue from other projects that we could have which are the renewable energy projects so on and so forth this is a really well studied trend across the country it's kind of all anybody talks about the solar level is the way that we've been as an industry paying folks retail for the net excess energy has an inequitable subsidy connotation to it in other pockets that don't have that's much money so we recognize as many utility a couple of years ago we needed to look at changing this and we spent quite a lot of time looking at how we might go about changing that before I get into the potential changes for that this is something we spent some time doing I want to spend a moment describing is that this is the excess purchase power so essentially that is the cost the premium, the delta between wholesale and retail what does that cost us a year over year in subsidies if solar keeps growing the way we think it's going to so this is a solar growth chart this is how much solar we think we're going to get by 2043 this is information that is based on a distributed energy resource forecast an analysis that we have that river power authority and we think we're going to get 81 megawatts by 2043 that continues in 2043 by the retail rate we will be paying a subsidy of 3.32 million dollars to our solar customers per year annually yes that's not cumulative so right now we're paying 63, 64,000 dollars a year so it's not a ton but it is increasing and we do see a lot of solar growth and retail rates also will go up over time so that takes into consideration so it rates over time does that make sense to everybody? I'm going to go to a recommendation slide because I kind of cut out a couple slides I'm going to tell you a couple things to help put some context on this so we have a couple proposed changes specifically where it comes to the value of the credit rate but I want to explain two terms that are on the proposed changes side one is the legacy retail rate we are proposing to put everyone who has a solar system on the dated rate becomes proactive to get a legacy rate of paid retail for a period of time at council last week we had proposed a 20 year legacy rate we heard feedback that that may be a little on the long side so we're doing modeling about 10, I think 20, 30, 10 and 15 years by 20, 30, 10 and 15 years and kind of see what that looks like but we are wanting to kind of preserve the economic model that our solar existing solar customers went into it with we also know most of our solar has been stalled in just the last few years and quite a lot of life left on them so we do want to give them some sort of generous legacy rate and then anyone moving forward would be placed on what we are calling what is called a value of solar credit rate for new customers what I want to talk about a little bit is what that means so value of solar is a new methodology for paying back folks for their net excess energy that is a rate that accurately reflects the local benefits of solar generation so our chosen global generation benefit is an 18% premium above wholesale so paying 18% about what we pay back for our solar customers reflect the local benefits those include a 3% mine loss so we pay for 3% of wine costs coming from that river and 15% environmental benefits this was based on substantial best practice research of value of solar studies all over the country and about 15% is what is found to be environmental benefit reduce greenhouse gas emissions in particular manner and one I actually just read about our heard guest the other day was reduced land use impacts trip that was a really interesting one said we have 7 megawatts of behind the meter solar that is 10 acres of land that we are not using for solar was very interesting one I had thought about before given that I am a land use manager I should probably have thought about that before but we will forget about that so what we are recommending we want to do is so currently without any changes to the current $1.32 million by 2043 equally implement an institute legacy rate as modeled for 20 years that is the only number I have right now and 18% value of solar we can reduce that to a $1.3 million associated per year by 2043 so that is our proposal and what we are bringing and socializing through all the different entities so that is kind of on the right side and then I did not have a slide on it but I just want to touch on this briefly is that with a renewable power purchase program the clever power authority it used to be 3.12 cents I believe bill an hour in addition to your credit rate and that was based on tariff 7 but you paid tariff to clever for renewable sources the tariff was eliminated in 2019 20 maybe in fact we no longer paid it in 2020 COVID happened staff change over I came a little bit up to the fact we have known for a little bit that needed to be adjusted but we wanted to roll it in with the rest of the rate rates so Brian and I worked and I worked with Pet River to determine a more accurate reflection of what are we paying additionally to Pet River for the wind energy that the wrecks are being retired on behalf of our participants on and that is actually closer to a 1.7 percent premium so it is a 60% reduction in renewable power purchase costs so our recommendation is that we adjust our rate reduce it by 60% to 1.7 cents for renewable power purchase program participants which is my favorite thing to say I have to say it in 10-10 today January 1st 25th and we'll be forward and then the other thing is generally open to wind time with the city that those funds were more just in the general kind of general fund of LPC it did support the power of the wind obviously but we had made efforts to more directly account for the budget and the income coming from that program to invest more locally in long-run specific renewable energy projects and one such thing actually passed recently that we got approval through an intergovernmental agreement to an IGA with Longman Housing Authority that we at LPC are subsidizing them the infrastructure upgrade costs at the Lijian Main so familiar with the Lijian Main Sixth and Popman, the low income senior housing Longman Housing Authority is doing major renovation of the whole building as they do every 20 years and they're taking off a thermal lock hot water solar system that's if you funked up there and they're putting solar PV on themselves a 165 KW system to offset their own bills and they're going to use that to support resident services in the building when they came back they could essentially finance and afford the solar but the infrastructure to go from 72 individual meters to a commercial panel and meter to support the size system was $150,000 that they had not factored into their cost so we came, we've partnered them on a variety of things, they came to us and we worked with them and we allocated a few funds to be collected this year to offset that infrastructure cost so pretty exciting thing and it's got a new way of spending money so pretty exciting stuff and we will be working on new projects with that, those funds will move forward and that was actually all I had to do a mouthful of a title three topics that I've been working on so we've brought up VPPs sort of as a little tech, seems sincere planner we've probably taken the weekend MBA in VPP type training so I'm going to ask presentation based the question if we actually went to a real VPP model wouldn't all of these concerns go away? how about equity? no, not necessarily so even in the VPP model so we're modeling our virtual plot plan so those numbers came with 81 megawatts of solar and battery and you're modeling it through LPC not PRPA we're modeling it as part of PRPA because we are one and the same so they have come up with not one and the same we work together collaboratively so we're working really really closely with that river we have a derms roadmap and we're going over our distributed energy resource management system which is like the enterprise market participation version of a VPP we actually are finalizing a review of an RRP going out to look for a derms and VPP vendor with that river should their chosen vendor serve our distribution needs we tend to opt in with them and develop a VPP coordination and with that river and as this part Fort Collins have their own VPP provider but they'll be working with us as well and that's something else I've been working on for two years okay and I'm interested in learning more yeah absolutely I can come back to you I'll just go sit down here yeah lots of information this looks so real but there is another gap here which is the definition of wholesale yeah that is a good question it is a defined term in the Fort yeah well but at some point they're in an energy market and their wholesale costs of energy are going to vary based on the renewable supply and stuff and the energy market is not up to snuff in terms of telling me what you're paying for when you pay a rate on the spot market and so we have no idea how that's going to reflect the wholesale rate that they charge us for our demand and we kind of really can't implement this until we know that well we'd have to buy futures so far out in order to really make a difference I think the economics here is a really big question that's for another time all of these questions are coming in as I was watching this right now they define the wholesale rate for how long but it's flat per year the rate is set per year yeah it's set per year so we can count on them maybe doing that for a few years but at some point it's going to have to flow and of course allowing wholesale rates out here is going to incentivize people to purchase batteries which is a behavior that we want so it seems to me that PRPA is dragging its feet in terms of getting that axe together and it's too you don't have the depth of bench to address that on our own because I've stuck my toe into it and it's getting hard but the liability that PRPA incurs by setting any rates here could be very de-symbolizing for the market if there's too much more fluctuation and the people who are buying their solar panels are not economists maybe you can speak to this they're trying to advertise and lay their costs and their pay off just kind of like on the back of the envelope so this is a really it just seems to me that the more these and the more we sort of like lateralize the production of energy and allow for folks to put out the solar on their parking lots and all of those things the more we take these economic risks out of that picture but anyway the whole economics is a completely different subject at some point wholesale is going to fluctuate in the market all the way through to the consumer it does now the cost of fuel, the cost of labor the cost of spare parts the cost of maintenance the cost of energy purchased on the market all of these things are not fixed so what the private does is they try to do an analysis and last and speaking this is what we expect the price to be for the year 2025 based on that this is what the rate is from them at a flat rate through the whole year at the end of the year this is true it's like oh we charged you too much and that goes over into next year or we didn't charge you enough it means it's going to have to be a larger rate increase so it floats they absorb that but at the end of the day we do have a number that we can point to for that year that says this is a wholesale price for a while but we're talking about a time and you know we're going to deal with behaviors of the energy supply like the duck curve and we're going to want people to charge their vehicles and their batteries when it's free which means wholesale comes in real time or near real time all the way home to the consumer and that's what BPP does so they're able to get their own energy and then they can manage their costs on the Derms component of the BPP like the Derms would talk to our BPP and say hey energy's cheap or free and now everybody charges cars and that's part of those interconnection standards that we need to actually figure out the protocol to actually tell them that because there are going to be a double handful full of serious geeks that are going to want to do that from their phone and the rest of it the system's going to have to do it for them don't we have other issues that we have to figure out where are we at time? sorry I know you've had your hand up but I'm going to talk about this more I think that this is a really big concern yes and again I'm happy to have even returned at some point to have a more robust distributed energy resource conversation because I know we had kind of that long opportunity a few months back and then this again is a little bit on the regulatory side of things well then by river incident I don't know didn't they we're doing a release of the homes to be in March I'm going to interrupt what you have from Michelle and say that we have 10 minutes to do things like decide how we're going to choose that number I want to I'll be pretty quick so one thing about I think solar on people's houses is fantastic I'm curious about the actual generating capacity of this especially if you want to have more tree cover on a whole variety of things does this include commercial buildings at all because it seems like that is the the big flat place where we can stay put jillion solar panels that have no cover already parking lots all the big commercial buildings I'm wondering so I guess I just have two questions really number one does any of this include commercial space like significant commercial space number two do we actually have an idea if everybody in town put solar panels on their house what we would max out at actually producing where would that go for the actual needs of the city yeah yes everything implied everything I've talked to you about today is both residential and commercial interconnection standards the way we have net access energy because we have different categories of paying back commercial are there large commercial spaces that are in contract with the city about putting the solar like target Walmart Walmart's the situation is that our electric rates are so low that their costs and standards don't require it but if we as I've been pushing for you know do you have time 10 minutes after the meeting I don't want to hold this up but I want to talk about I did put it on I know we can have come back and I'll say I'm always keeping my eye open for big groups I just don't have any plans for them at this moment but it's definitely something that's on my radar I'm always looking for groups and grounds do we have an idea of how much the city could produce all the residential systems all I know is that we have to the forecast of 81 megawatts I do not know if they maximize every real space that would look like I would be happy to work with you very interesting we do have the public to be heard we don't have any it's it's not on the agenda but the other business just quickly we have several vacancies that are coming up so we do need to decide how we want to approach the recruitment and the process or interviewing applicants that come through let me just let everyone know what we did previously we can do it again because we have a small group left everyone is left with a committee needs to review hold on a second let me so last through the way we did it we interviewed we had a small nominating committee that interviewed the applicants and then brought those recommendations to the board to approve ultimately city council has the decision making of the appoint the other option would be to interview as a full board and that would essentially be the meeting or we would have to schedule something outside of the meeting that works for everybody to do those things so those are options that are on the table you all would need to define the outcome you want to do this year well I vote that we do it as a whole board because the board emphasizes so small it is an innovative committee last year we had two people as the nominating committee nominating committee two restricted to two members so you don't have the meeting component to it but but so we're the whole board would be anyone on the board who wants to be a part of that so you are applying now what should you do so we would need to do interviews in the loop of chain now in the big meetings well I would like to propose that we just do it as a board rather than doing two steps since it's only four of us left there would not be two steps so the nominating committee would act on behalf of the board to make the recommendation to city council they would not bring it to the board oh okay sorry I messed up my thought no I don't remember voting I don't remember voting yeah we don't remember voting on it I think we have that's not the way it has worked I think last time you all did it as a board the first time we did it as a nominating committee and that committee forwarded their recommendation to council on behalf of the board I remember all of us voting on this well I would like to propose that last year the board did it together instead of having a nominating committee first we need to decide if we use the main meeting as or do we need to figure out if we have a meeting and do we don't have an interview in the process can we do it first I still don't have any idea how many applicants there are still open to that recruitment I still want to propose but we do it for the meeting that the remaining court members are all present and vote that's my proposal my motion I guess three of us need it that's Tim Trout so we're named members of Michelle and Mary and Robert Robert is a part of this as well because Charles is leading his position early so it's actually important the fact that we're leaving does that mean we don't you would if you're not reapplying you would be able to be part of the decision that was going check your motion I did a motion my motion is that at the next meeting the remaining board members do the review process and create the recommendations that will go to City Council the remaining members or the board so does that mean we would do all the interviews or we would set up a separate meeting could do it either after the meeting or ahead of the meeting if you wanted to do it that way I will amend my motions that we start a little bit early so that we can get it all done at that one time that is my motions that we start a little bit early and that the board when I sit in the board yeah it looks like Charles has squeezed himself for the rest of the sessions no it's just not available okay I'm sorry I misunderstood I think he should be tonight right he's out in May because he's going to be in New York already erased I thought that he said that he was not so anyway my motion is that the board will do the applicant we'll start a little early with your applicants and create the recommendations to go to City Council at the next meeting so the applicants it would actually be interview we would divvy up how long the interview is based on how many people okay yep so the meeting will start at what time to decide so we'll see could we start at 3.30 so it's virtual can we start at 3.30 how can you see the future I can determine the future I have a couple of tentative things deep dive on passive design or discussion on the future and probably to bump that based on the conversation we had today so there's space for me to move some of those things so if we did an interview starting at 4.30 that would only be a half hour before every hearing meeting I think it has to be 3.30 well and it's not 4 it's however many applicants we have 4 positions and just based on past experience that should be out there recruiting because 4 is alive yeah so the motion would be that next month we start at 3.30 so we would interview applicants and then as a board vote on who to recommend the council regular meeting would still start at 4.30 so I will second that can we go ahead? I agree it was just wait okay alright okay so there's no fear of voting your strategy keep her to have alright alright sorry hold on I did have a question for you these or whoever is doing the equity I can't remember the name yeah that it would be great if maybe are there any members of that that could be on a board because these sustainability boards are so white you know it would be good then meetings are on the same page actually yes we have a conversation and it is 6.33 so we can pin in that for another time because there's a lot more to that but I think that's a conversation we need to have can we just do a quick vote to continue the conversation about to say yes or no if we're interested in the passive design yeah so that was the other one last thing if you don't mind really quickly we voted last time to do a deep dive I do also want to make note of the fact that at the city council meeting on April 9th the mayor did also make motion which was approved to bring forward building electrification codes and I'm not sure the timing of that so some of that might be accelerated and I'm waiting to hear from building services but because I'm on the timeline of that is that that comes to you all for conversation so I know that we wanted to have the passive design conversation before hopefully that other broader building electrification for the conversation as well but I don't know if we have that yet so we're going to try to get everything aligned if you all leave out on the passive design okay so I can I said I was going to do some research to talk about maybe we can bring my goal back again the architect that Lisa and I met with who's built the passive neighborhood in a little passive block in Prospect and these also just been put down a project in Argato which has been highly sobering from a zoning and land use and has a lot to say about how cities should be hit in this regard yeah so I would like to make a motion that we have that deep dive as soon as possible it could be the next meeting you would find the people that you would like to invite to bring in to as experts on that so my motion is that we have that conversation we do it at the next meeting or as soon as possible or as soon as possible after that it doesn't get limited okay it's your second all those better thank you sorry to keep you all passed council we already talked about we already got the election application did you have anything that you wanted to share of not to be shared in a few minutes but it's a whole thing for now and so it's all mine was that good thank you all